Electric cars for everyone—someday

Ken Kimmell, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), is very glad he decided in February to lease an electric vehicle.

February… that’s just about the time that my wife and I considered buying an electric car—and balked.

Why did Kimmell and the Crowders reach opposite decisions? Well, they did so for reasons that Kimmell elucidates very nicely in a blog post titled “My no-regrets, enthusiastic transition to driving an EV.”

First, Kimmell. “As UCS’s president,” Kimmell writes, “I was obviously very motivated to drive an electric car.” That’s crucial. He could swing the expense—also crucial. He had the leisure and the savvy to perform the necessary research. He also … this is very mundane … had a garage.

Result? Kimmell leased himself an all-electric Chevy Bolt EV—and, for four main reasons, he loves it:

It is really fun to drive

It is more, not less, convenient than a gasoline-powered car

It is more affordable than you think

It feels really good not to cause unnecessary pollution

Sounds awesome. But electric vehicles aren’t yet for everyone, as Kimmell discusses in the second half of his blog post. Which brings us to…

The Crowders.

For us, affordability was something of a stumbling block. We could afford a used electric vehicle as a second car, but affordability tended to go hand in hand with an 80-mile range—fine for extended errand-running, but not much else.

The real stumbling block would have been charging our new used car. That’s because we live in a rented house without a garage, which means that charging the car would have required—well, the details are boring. But in short, we were looking at considerable trouble and expense, which doubly gave us pause because we suspected we might soon move to a different house. As indeed we are doing tomorrow.

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I hope this article is not paid by the Oil, Coal and Gas industry lobby? If it is, I apologise in advance, because I will debunk two of the myths in the article. For the record, I am happy owner of electric Nissan LEAF (since 2014), driving every month between 2200 and 3500 km. (Today, the odometer turned 105,000km) 1. The affordability issue myth. In short, it is cheaper to finance, and buy, a brand new electric car, than to spend money on ICE car. Make your own arithmetics: The Nissan LEAF energy consumption is approximately 13,5 kW/h per 100km.… Read more »